As I have already noted this morning, I believe that President Trump's announcement on autism, made last night, is a part of his politics of hate, with all that flows from that being almost too difficult to contemplate.
This post seeks to do two things:
- It defines the conditions that represent the forms of neurodivergency I am discussing.
- It discusses why these conditions have persisted due to the evolutionary advantage they have provided, at least to some individuals who have them (and, in this regard, I am aware that autism types 1 and 3 are distinct and should, ideally, not be grouped under the same name as a result).
Definitions
The conditions I am discussing can, very briefly, be described as follows. Much more information can, of course, be found on the web:
- Autism Level 1 – Those with this condition may require some educational and other support, e.g., in the workplace. Social communication can be challenging for them; they typically prefer routines, but they can usually live fairly or entirely independently. Many people they engage with will be unaware that they have this condition. Many are exceptionally good at masking it.
- Autism Level 2 – These people might need more or even substantial support as they have bigger difficulties with communication and flexibility, and daily support is often required.
- Autism Level 3 – Those with this level of autism frequently need very substantial support: they will face major challenges in communication and behaviour, often requiring intensive help.
- ADHD ( Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is a recognised pattern of behaviour often displaying inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. It is often associated with high energy, creativity, and a tendency to seek novelty. Contrary to popular perception, this is not a condition only affecting males, and people do not grow out of it; it is a lifelong condition. Some people benefit from medication to help manage ADHD, but not all do. Many people who those with ADHD engage with will be unaware that they have this condition. Many with ADHD are, like those with autism level 1, exceptionally good at masking it.
- AuDHD. This describes someone who is both autistic and ADHD. They combine deep focus and structure with spontaneity and fast-shifting attention. This condition has only been medically recognised, officially, since 2013.
Evolutionary advantages
(AI has been used in this section, but editing has been undertaken to ensure consistency with my reading on this issue.)
One of the things rarely said is that autism, ADHD and AuDHD exist in society because they have always had a purpose. That is why I suggest neurodivergency, which autism, ADHD, and AuDHD can be described as, is widespread. Evolution has permitted this because these conditions can be behaviourally adaptive. It is likely that 15% of all people in any society might be described as such. That is not, then, an accident of human design. These adaptations have helped human societies to flourish.
Firstly, consider autism. Autistic traits such as attention to detail, persistence, heightened sensory awareness, and deep pattern recognition bring immense value. In small human communities in our past, these were the individuals who observed the changes in the seasons, tracked animals, remembered where food and water could be found, and preserved culture through memory. They did not follow the crowd, and so when conformity might have led to disaster, they were the ones who insisted on trying something different. What is now labelled as autistic focus was, in evolutionary terms, specialisation, or a way of making sure that no community ever forgot how to do the things it needed to survive.
Secondly, think about ADHD. Traits such as impulsivity, novelty-seeking, high energy, and rapid reaction have obvious value in the history of human survival. ADHD individuals were the explorers who would take the risk of going over the hill, the hunters who had the energy to persist, and the people who thought in unexpected ways. Their willingness to break rules, to try the untried, and to adapt quickly gave groups the flexibility that rigid conformity never could. In modern classrooms, those same traits may be stigmatised, but in the evolutionary environment of our species, they were strengths.
Thirdly, there is the combination called AuDHD. At first sight, autism's drive for structure and ADHD's drive for change appear contradictory. But evolution often creates hybrids precisely because they expand the range of possibilities. Someone with AuDHD can hyperfocus on a subject with intensity and then leap laterally across ideas when new information appears. They can be both cautious and bold. They can persist when it matters and take risks when that is what survival demands. AuDHD is not a flaw: it is a double toolkit within a single mind.
Finally, what matters most is that societies need cognitive diversity. Human beings did not survive because we were all alike. We survived precisely because we were not. Groups that had both the careful observers and the risk-takers, the detail-watchers and the big-picture thinkers, the guardians of tradition and the pioneers of change, were the groups that endured. Evolution preserved autism and ADHD not because they were problems to be eliminated, but because they were essential to collective survival.
The problem within our present culture is that we insist on viewing these traits through a medicalised lens, as if their only meaning is deficit. That is nonsense. Autism, ADHD, and AuDHD are not disorders in the sense of being evolutionary mistakes. They are forms of human variation that make us more resilient, although some undoubtedly need assistance with managing these conditions in the world in which we now live. If we were wise, we would stop asking how to cure them and start asking how to value them because in a world that faces the crises of climate breakdown, inequality, and the failures of conventional economics, the people who think differently may be the ones who save us.
And it is these people that Trump wants to 'cure' of a condition which is part of who they are, which is a truly terrifying prospect.
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[…] this context, please note the separate blog that I will be posting simultaneously to this one, which discusses what the three currently […]
There seems to be a lot of concern amongst politicians about the rise in mental health diagnosis and more children needing EHCP’s
There seem however to be very little curiosity about WHY
There are clearly a lot of people out there who in the past seemed to have ,’managed’ so why are they not managing now?
You only have to read some of the stories coming out of schools, issues like uniform, reflection rooms etc to realise that its not surprising that a lot of previously ‘healthy’ young people are now cracking up and thats before you start on Housing, Benefits, Poverty etc
It is perfectly possible of course to create a society where as far as is possible you dont create avoidable ill health but that might mean a more just and equitable one and we cant have that can we?
The politics of care, in other words.
Thank you, that’s an interesting and very useful read.
You write: “we insist on viewing these traits through a medicalised lens”. This is very true, and in addition the increasing use of statistics to rationalise the world around us tempts us to consider “averages” and by implication, “norms”: even the standard distribution is called the “Normal distribution”. Therefore things are often labelled according to their distance from some norm even when such a norm would have no sense. The term “neurodivergent” was undoubtedly created in an attempt to be neutral but it nevertheless has an implication of distance from some norm which doesn’t exist. We would never dream of talking about, say, the skin colour of a person as being “chromodivergent”. I accept that there’s a fine line between divergence and diversity.
As I have aged, I have become more interested in the origins of scientific ideas. It’s clear that the advantages – even the necessity – of diversity are blatant in many fields. One can’t read biographies of giants in physics and maths, from Einstein, to Dirac, to Gödel to John von Neuman without thinking that these days they would be labelled as “neurodivergent” in one way or another. It’s almost a given that to have ground-breaking ideas one has to be outside the crowd and to have an extraordinary degree of focus and determination to develop – and defend them. I’m confident that this would go back to the roots of human civilisation if the evidence was available.
A great deal to agree with – especially around ‘normality – to which I do not aspire.
In the late 1960’s I was lucky enough to attend a lecture given by Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund, and a psychoanalyst in her own right. It was in a packed lecture theatre in a north London psychiatric teaching hospital.
This “little old lady” climbed onto the podium, and in a thick Germanic accent, and said so authoritatively “What is Normality?”
It still sends shivers down my spine and I have thought much the same ever since.
It is a falsehood created by thsoe committed to economic uniformity
Might part of the problems caused by the negative framing of the differnt ways of perception and reaction you describe be exacebated by the current political fashions/impostions listed below?
1) The unstated intention to weaken any powers of government to challenge the powers of finance/big business by reducing its expenditures
2) The intention/compulsion of the backers of Neoliberalism to assert their beliefs in their superiority by diminishing the living/existing conditions of regular people and their children.
3) The imposition in both the U. S. A and the U. K of a mass education system/set ups which rigidly force students to be fitted to an inflexible, dull and unexploring curriculum which is not allowed to be developed and/or fitted to students or local contexts. A much more effective and welcoming approach, which really works, is to fit and adapt the curriculum to the student.
4) The rigid imposition of, and intense publicity attatched to a single, inappropriate educational measurement system. (S.A.T tests only record comparison with other students irrespective of personality and soci-economic contexts. They measure conformity to a distorted and limited assessment system.)
(Ipsative referencing measures changes in learning, indicating appropriate bespoke teaching-learning. Criterion referencing compares individual performance with the matter in hand and so is of much more use in accommodating the student and matching their tuition to their talents, opportuities and needs.)
Thanks. Noted
Another group othered
From comics to the neurodiverse Trump will, at some level recognise that those hard wired for truth telling represent his greatest threat.
The truth is Americans chose fascism when they voted for Trump second time around. Either cognitive dissonance stoos that being recognised (it has a democratic election.. ) of fear stops that being said. Whilst corporates play follow the leader.
The display of a few more autistic traits would make for better politics and change now may be dependant upon those able to using their autistic superpowers.
https://share.google/ev5soVpzAw9jm6iFh
We agree.
Your penultimate paragraph is an excellent summary.
We do indeed need to stop asking how to cure autism and start asking how best to value them.
But I think you understate the last point in that paragraph. The world faces many challenges, as it always has. To meet those challenges we need new ideas. New ideas don’t come from a consensus of the majority who think the same way. Indeed, unless we’re careful, that leads to unproductive group think. New ideas come from people who think differently. Those are the neurodivergent amount us (in which I include other conditions, such as dyslexia, not just ASD and ADHD). We NEED neurodivergence.
The sadness is that our social systems often, usually, prevent such people from reaching their potential, particularly our education system (primary, secondary, and tertiary). We’re wasting so so much potential.
As for Trump, he is frightening. He’s attacking many groups. Frankly, I worry less about his views on autism, bad as they are, than about many other aspects of his presidency. Anyone with a grain of common sense, and that’s most people, realise that what he’s saying about paracetamol is utter nonsense. Most people will simply ignore it. They will put it in the same category as his comments on injecting bleach to cure covid. Utter nonsense.
Much to agree with
Tim Kent says: “He’s attacking many groups. Frankly, I worry less about his views on autism, bad as they are, than about many other aspects of his presidency. Anyone with a grain of common sense, and that’s most people, realise that what he’s saying about paracetamol is utter nonsense.”
It’s the same thinking, in strict father politics deviation from norms is caused by lack of discipline, Through discipline children are supposed to become internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world and the only possible legitimate excuse, in their minds, for lack of discipline is fundamental Illness or “mental weakness” caused by some external influence. This thinking also extends to political differences, as demonstrated by this recent Washington Examiner headline
“Left-wing extremism reflects psychological disorders, mental health professionals say”
and various US reports that “Liberals are much more likely than conservatives to be diagnosed with mental illnesses or disorders”
Whilst most people will realise that what he’s saying about paracetamol is utter nonsense, that still leaves many people who will believe it.
Thank you. Gender, brain-wiring, skin colour, sexual orientation, are all among the things we’re born with, they are part of us. Neurodiversity is part of who I am. In your other posts, you write about the politics of hatred, of those who seek to impose conformity, and exclude those they don’t tolerate. Extreme intolerance and power are a very dangerous and destructive combination, and finding courage to stand up is hard. People are being ‘disappeared’ in the US, and a big university handed the authorities a list of students and staff who had taken part in a protest, I heard from Robert Reich. He was a child in the McCarthy era, and I find his perspective helpful, as do I yours, but so much is unravelling, it is frightening.
Thanks
I find Robert Reich useful
To put it into context, we have likely had neurodivergent people in our populations for many thousands of years, meaning it is a useful trait. Now we have societies where the neurodivergent make up a higher proportion of the population of our prisons than they do our free society. Very telling.
Agreed
I very much appreciate your posts on neurodivergence. To augment the discussion of the (IMO, simplistically behavioural) classification levels there’s quite a good video on the youtube channel “I’m Autistic, Now What?” which might help anyone thinking along the lines of: “But I don’t fit into any of those…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7g3ksiiNyw
Being AuADHD most certainly allowed me to retire at 44 after falling ass-backwards into IT at 23 with no money and zero formal qualifications in anything at all.
I could have continued making plenty of money in IT but I became bored with it.
So now I take photos of fashion models and actors for fun and ride my bike when the weather is warm enough.
People get confused when I say I’m happy to be autistic. My daughter understands though and she is pretty relaxed about the idea that my grandson might be on the spectrum somewhere.
While indeed level 3 autism is a serious challenge for some, being autistic really isn’t as bad in most cases as the majority of medical professionals seem to think it is.
I certainly wouldn’t change my neurology if I could go back in time to do so. NTs should be thanking us, not pitying us.
I look at people like Stephen Fry and note he says he would never want to give up his neurodiversity. He is very far from being alone.
Good luck.
It appears to me that the majority of ‘drawbacks’ to being neurodivergent are due to the need to conform. Anxiety is a major issue for autistic people as they struggle to understand and fit it. Masking is exhausting. We are all limiting the potential of a significant portion of the population. It’s true for most children under neoliberalism, but especially for the neurodivergent.
Much to agree with
I would hope that education would eradicate such attitudes as those that Trump displays. But as I see the way our society is developing, I fear that that even discussing the issues will become increasingly difficult, or impossible. Having a divided society with groups that can be labelled, targeted, denigrated and worse, is becoming a totem of their macho attitude, in a deplorable way. They thrive on hate, it’s as if they cannot live without the daily incantations they then spout. I admit that I just don’t understand them nor how and why they think in this way. When and where did the brainwashing happen?
Thanks for an interesting article. 1 nit-pick, though:
There are no “types” or “levels” of autism.* We are all different because we’re all humans, not robots. But underneath it all, there are fundamental and qualitatively-different properties that autism confers, that are common to all autists. Our commonality is not visible from the outside.
But NB — despite our shared inner commonalities, we are all still different people, and some of us need help sometimes, as NTs do too; as all humans do.
* — these terms are useful to the professional carers who look after autists. For them, these words are part of their professional vocabulary. They focus on how much help an individual needs. To everyone else, these terms contribute only to misunderstanding and confusion. I suggest they are best avoided.
I agree – and hint at the issues here.
I agree with the common suggestion that when you have met one autistic person you have met one autistic person. There is no stereotype.
Like the communists and other authoritarians past, Trump wants to engineer a new phalanx of souls for a new society.
To be know as ’empathy-lite’ or something.
How many times will we have to live through this bullshit until we finally wipe ourselves out?
What I find disgraceful is no steer, genius mcsween, and Rachel, are insistent on cutting funding for the neurodivergent and others, claiming we must cut the benefits budget.
But then I remember no steer and especially genius mcsween are big recipients of programmes/policies supplied by the TB foundation which is fixated with putting the UK population into a one fit all digital world model.
Guess who wins? The US tech bros and other billionaires investors. Who in turn fund?
Agreed
Appropriate use of language is so important.
I often speak to parents and carers about the value of a diagnosis, but I point out that it shouldn’t be seen as a label (they are for clothing to tell you how to launder the item correctly). Instead, diagnosis of a condition should be seen as a signpost pointing you in the direction of where you can get help and support if you need it, especially from those with lived experience of the condition. Their response is often one of a light bulb coming on, many have been close to tears….. meanwhile if professionals are in the same room their response is often ‘Why didn’t we think of that?’ The change in approach is often quite profound.
As Mayer Shevin puts it…
Them and Us
By – Meyer Shevin
We like things – They fixate on objects
We try to make friends – They Display attention seeking behaviour
We take Breaks – They display off task behaviour
We stand up for ourselves – They are non-compliant
We have hobbies – They self stimulate
We choose our friends wisely – They display poor peer socialisation
We persevere – They Perseverate
We love people – They have dependencies on People
We go for a walk – They run away
We insist – They tantrum
We change our minds – They have short attention spans
There is no diagnosis, just a discovery of what is and always has been.
Isn’t that more or less a *definition* of “diagnosis” — discovering what’s there, which is sometimes what has *always* been there, as you say.
“I believe that President Trump’s announcement on autism, made last night, is a part of his politics of hate,”
This is true!
Never forget that Trump only cares about Trump, keeping himself out of jail and future real estate deals.
The Trump “politics of hate” is nothing but red meat to feed his die-hard base supporters. Hates unites his die-hard base supporters.
Also, in my arrogant Yank opinion, 90% of what comes out of Trump’s mouth has no other purpose than to feed the 24/7 news cycle and divert main-stream-media’s attention away from reporting on the Epstein Scandal.
There’s a lot of misunderstanding about the ‘functional’ levels of neurodivergence. I test outside the normal range, so would probably be level 1 or AuDHD (I haven’t done ADHD testing to see whether that would also apply). I found social situations very difficult growing up and to a lesser extent still do. I’ve never had support with this, and the one time a company agreed ‘reasonable accommodation’ my manager then immediately set against me, resulting in them paying compensation for breaching those arrangements, and I haven’t tried since.
Being neurodivergent in no way means you can’t work or can’t function in society, and some roles may be particularly suited to those who are. That attention to detail can be great within science, IT, contract law, etc.
Some of those who have some level of neurodivergence and a high intelligence are amongst those not well understood. Support will help maximise what they can achieve, but when their achievement despite specific challenges is above-average the value of support may not be readily identified. In some cases this includes having some form of ‘crutch’ to avoid facing a problem which only becomes a problem when that tool is no longer available. In my case a twin brother to make friends so I didn’t learn how to do it until relatively late in my teens.
Twins may have their own specific neurodivergence – mentally my pronouns growing up were effectively we/they, because ‘we’ owned something, ‘we’ were friends with someone, ‘we’ were invited round someone’s house, or to a party. Until my brother was and I wasn’t. I knew various other twins that were commonly more independent from one another, so I do wonder whether other neurodivergence played into my experience of this.
I am a twin…
I recognise that
We are not identical
But we’re also still entangled
Yesterday Pat McFadden said disabled people need more skills in order to get jobs. My skills list as an audhd,( love the fact I have a double toolkit of skills). Autonomy, creativity, high energy, questioning, seeking change but routine, omnipotential, like to say no and challenge everything and like risk taking. Oh and i work in bursts of 2 hours only and I don’t work after 12 pm mid morning and not before 8am. Tell me any job that lists my skill set, in my area and any employer who wants me to work for them. I am no obedient member of the sheeple, I have a brain, a female, and for that I am toxic and dangerous to most work environments. Yet fear me for what I could think to do, how I could be more productive, help more people and be an integral, needed member of the community. It is their loss not to have my skills, not my fault I don’t have the ones they want/ want me to have. I am free knowing I am good enough and I lost enough faith in the system to free me from the shackles of conformity blame. I queen of my own heap, I’m here if you need me but don’t ask me to get in a box (wait was that what they wanted Barbie in the Barbie movie to do, mmmm)
McFadden is the last person who might understand neurodiversity. If there is neurotypicality, he is it.
Trump’s dig at vaccines is concerning enough, but what’s even more disturbing is when he talks about hepatitis B. He says: ‘Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted. There’s no reason to give a baby that’s almost just born hepatitis B. So I would, say, wait till the baby is 12 years-old and formed.’ In the context of accusations already against him, that doesn’t sound like a medical argument, it lands more like an unsettling admission.